Now, at least, he can start to pay that money back. The many creditors of the novelist DBC Pierre were given a crumb of comfort last night when the self-confessed serial "cheating bastard" won literature's most famous prize - the Man Booker - in an extraordinary final twist to an already bizarre story.
Pierre, the nom de plume of the reformed Mexican-Australian wildman Peter Finlay, is the oddest and most controversial character to have won the award, which made the careers of Salman Rushdie, JM Coetzee and Margaret Atwood. Last week he confessed to the Guardian to betraying and fleecing his friends in a decade-long rampage over four continents that culminated in swindling an elderly American artist out of his home.

But three years ago, having fled to Ireland, a repentant Finlay began to swap the life of a fantasist for that of a fiction writer and created a character in Vernon God Little who has been called the Huckleberry Finn of the Eminem generation.

In an effort to prove that his rehabilitation was genuine, Finlay took on his pseudonym, which stands for "Dirty But Clean" Peter, a wry joke that was meant to signal that Finlay - who has lived in terror of being unmasked since he was nominated for the prize - had put his murky, buccaneering past behind him.

In his 42 years he has managed to get himself shot by a neighbour in Mexico City, work up debts of hundreds of thousands of dollars, cultivate drug and gambling addictions and leave behind a trail of wronged women, despite having to have his face reconstructed by surgeons after a horrific car crash. In between he has managed unsuccessful careers as a filmmaker, treasure hunter, smuggler and graphic artist.

Now he can add "Man Booker" winner to that gobsmacking curriculum vitae, and he can even start paying back the creditors he has vowed to make amends to. The £50,000 prize money is only the start - Booker winners invariably go on to make fortunes on the back of increased sales and telephone number advances for their next books.

But it was his rollicking debut, Vernon God Little, rather than his Rabelaisian personal life which mesmerised the judges, Professor John Carey, their chairman, insisted. Like Finlay, the Texan teenager who is the hero of the book lied himself into a corner. Unlike Finlay, Vernon faced the death penalty, and not just the ire of his creditors and former girlfriends. Prof Carey called the book "a coruscating black comedy reflecting our alarm and fascination with modern America".

Everyone loves a rogue, particularly a repentant one, and many felt that the jury came down finally in favour of the Mexican-Australian over the favourite, Monica Ali's Brick Lane for the elan of his writing which has the colour of a life lived at suicidal speed.

In an intriguing twist to the tale, the odds on Pierre shortened dramatically in the last few days to 2-1 from 5-1.

Martyn Goff, the director of the prize, said only once before in its 35-year history had the judges made such a quick decision."It was amazing, it was all over within an hour. Four of the five judges jumped at Pierre and the fifth was not unhappy. I am absolutely shocked myself by the speed of it.

"Maybe they felt sorry for him because of his debts. Reading the book, you get the feeling it could only have been written by an American, when we know that it wasn't written by one. We thought it was the most imaginative, unprecedented book for an English person to write," he said.

Pierre/Finlay, however, despite his Australian twang, prefers to call himself a Mexican. The one group who will not be toasting his victory are the bookies, who, having played a part in Finlay's earlier downfall, were badly burned.

Graham Sharpe, of William Hill, the doyen of literary sweep stakes, was sour about the shortlist.

"It was difficult to motivate myself to read the books. It is certainly the least impressive year I can remember," he said.

This year's £50,000 Man Booker prize has been awarded to Alan Hollinghurst, for his satire of the 1980s Conservative government, The Line of Beauty.

Hollinghurst's picks up from where his debut novel, The Swimming Pool Library (1988) breaks off, and tells the story of the lives, loves and postgraduate studies of gay antihero Nick Guest against the wider political backdrop of Thatcher's Britain. Described as "magnificent" by the Daily Telegraph and "a classic of our times" by the Observer, the Guardian's reviewer, Alfred Hickling, called Hollinghurst "one of the sharpest observers of privileged social groupings since Anthony Powell".

Hollinghurst, who made the Booker shortlist a decade ago in 1994 for his story of a tutor's infatuation with his 17-year-old charge, described himself as "very excited" by his win. "It's amazing to me that the long solitary process of writing a novel should come to a moment like this," he said. "It's a decision I shall be grateful for for the rest of my life."

Mantel had been the bookmaker's favourite to win the award.

William Hill had offered odds at 10/11 - the shortest odds it has ever given a book to win the prize.

Ion Trewin, literary director of the Booker Prizes, said the last time a favourite walked off with the prize was Yann Martel's Life of Pi in 2002.

Naughtie was joined on the judging panel by biographer and critic Lucasta Miller; Michael Prodger, literary editor of the Sunday Telegraph; Professor John Mullan, academic, journalist and broadcaster; and Sue Perkins, comedian, journalist and broadcaster.

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, first awarded in 1969, aims to promote the finest in fiction by rewarding what its judges believe is the best book of the year.

THE FINKLER QUESTION - HOWARD JACOBSON
About the book: Jacobson's 11th novel is a story of friendship and loss, exclusion and belonging, and of the wisdom and humanity of maturity.

After an evening of reminiscing with old friends, Julian Treslove - a professionally unspectacular former BBC radio producer - is attacked on his way home. Afterwards, his sense of who and what he is slowly changes.

About the author: Born in Manchester in 1942, Jacobson read English at Cambridge and taught at the University of Sydney for three years before moving on to Selwyn College, Cambridge, and Wolverhampton Polytechnic.

He has been longlisted twice for the Man Booker Prize - for Kalooki Nights in 2006 and Who's Sorry Now? in 2002.

Sir Andrew Motion says: "This is one of his best books. It's very funny and well-paced about very important things - the question of Jewishness, what it consists in, what sort of behaviour it licences and prohibits."

PARROT AND OLIVIER IN AMERICA - PETER CAREY
About the book: An exploration of American democracy, the book brings together two characters who - born on different sides of history - come together to share an extraordinary relationship.

French aristocrat Olivier is sent to the New World to escape the revolution, while Parrot, the son of a English printer who always wanted to be an artist but ended up a servant, is sent to spy on and protect him.

About the author: Born in Australia in 1943, Carey won the Booker Prize in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda and again in 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang.

He was also shortlisted in 1985 for Illywhacker and was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize in 2007 and 2009. He has also written a collection of short stories - The Fat Man in History, and a book for children - The Big Bazoohley.

Sir Andrew Motion says: "This is right up there with the best of his books - it's an amazingly ambitious, ingenious, clever, wonderful book. I think he's one of the writers I feel most pleased to be alive at the same time as, so that I can read his novels."

ROOM - EMMA DONOGHUE
About the book: Told through the voice of five-year-old Jack, Room is the story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.

Jack lives in a locked, 11-foot-square room with his mother and a television. When they manage to escape, the pair have to learn how to live together in a world full of other people.

About the author: Donoghue was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1969 and studied English and French at University College, Dublin before moving to England. She received a PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1997 and now lives in Canada.

Her other novels include The Sealed Letter, Landing Touchy Subjects, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits and Slammerkin.

Sir Andrew Motion says: "It seemed to me it was not simply a book dealing with what it is like to be imprisoned, but there's a much larger room outside the room and that room is the world. The book did two things - to say something profound and meaningful about confinement and something very interesting about release."

IN A STRANGE ROOM - DAMON GALGUT
About the book: A tale of longing and thwarted desire, rage and compassion, In A Strange Room tells of one man's search for love and a place to call home.

Described by The Guardian's Jan Morris as "not only highly polished, [but] also extraordinarily readable," the book follows journeys to Greece, India and Africa, each of which end in disaster.

About the author: South African Damon Galgut was born in Pretoria in 1963 and wrote his first novel, A Sinless Season, when he was 17.

He was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2003 for The Good Doctor and his other books include Small Circle of Beings, The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs and The Imposter.

Sir Andrew Motion says: "It has an amazing sense of reach and stretch and imaginative boldness about it. I was struck by the ambitiousness of its structure and how it asked us to make very interesting connections between stories which, at first glance, might seem to not have much to do with each other."

THE LONG SONG - ANDREA LEVY
About the book: Levy's first novel in six years is set in Jamaica during the last years of slavery and the early years of freedom that followed.

It tells the story of July, a slave girl born on the Amity Sugar Plantation in the 19th Century and selected by a white mistress to live with her in the house as a lady's maid.

About the author: Levy was born in London in 1956 to Jamaican parents who came to Britain in 1948. She has previously written four novels, Every Light in the House Burnin', Never Far From Nowhere, Fruit of the Lemon and Small Island.

Small Island won the Orange Prize, the Whitbread Best Book Award and the Commonwealth Writer's Prize and was made into a BBC One drama in 2009.

Sir Andrew Motion says: "An extraordinary, ambitious re-writing of a historical story approached by a number of authors in recent years. Very tactfully and powerfully done."

C - TOM MCCARTHY
About the book: C follows the short, intense life of Serge Carrefax, a man who surges into the electric modernity of the early 20th Century, transfixed by the technologies that will obliterate him.

When personal loss strikes Serge in his adolescence, his world takes on a darker and more morbid aspect.

About the author: McCarthy was born in 1969 and grew up in London. He created the International Necronautical Society (INS) in 1999 - a "semi-fictitious organisation" combining literature, art and philosophy.

It led to publications, installations and exhibitions in galleries and museums around the world from Tate Britain to The Drawing Centre in New York. He has written two previous novels - Remainder and Men in Space.

Sir Andrew Motion says: "A book of outstanding range, ambition, narrative excitement and with a very interesting central theme for everybody to think about: The relationship between communication by mechanised means and the lack of communication by which human beings can have between one another"